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Month: January 2009

I just pledged not to donate to my all-time favorite representative. Not one thin dime, at least, not until he throws his support to campaign finance reform. Which I’m reasonably sure he will.

Change Congress has a “donor strike” campaign going to give some impetus to legislation that will give corporate special interests a boot in the arse. It looks mighty fine:

The bipartisan Fair Elections Now Act was offered last Congress, and will be offered again this year by Sens. Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Arlen Specter (R-PA), and Reps. John Larson (D-CT) and Walter Jones (R-NC).

Under this legislation, congressional candidates who raise a threshold number of small-dollar donations would qualify for a chunk of funding—several hundred thousand dollars. If they accept this funding, they can’t raise big-dollar donations. But they can raise contributions up to a certain amount (such as $100 or $250), which would be matched several times over by a central fund. This would create an incentive for politicians to opt into this system and run people-powered campaigns.

No new taxpayer dollars would be required. TV broadcasters, who currently get access to our public airwaves for free and make billions of dollars as a result, would pay a fee that would be the source of revenue for the central fund.

It’s a great bill. You can help pressure Congress to pass it by joining the donor strike today.

Now, I love my senators and my Congressman. I do. They’re good Dems, they work hard for us, and I’m proud of them. But they haven’t jumped on board with this legislation yet, so it’s time to prod buttock (thank you, Terry Pratchett) and get them moving on campaign finance reform.

Three days after receiving $25 billion in federal bailout funds, Bank of America Corp. hosted a conference call with conservative activists and business officials to organize opposition to the U.S. labor community’s top legislative priority.

[snip]

This is outrageous. It’s bad enough to see these Bozos still try and buy private jets and hand out massive bonuses with our money, but to actively attack labor with it should be a criminal offense.

It’s not, and alas not likely to ever be, but we can put a serious crimp in their power by reducing their ability to buy politicians. Time for a wee bit of a message to be sent.

Not only are some of the most non-trusted companies in America blatantly trying to buy off Congress, but they’re using our bailout money to do it. Enough!

If there was ever a time to join Change Congress’s political “donor strike” in support of fundamental campaign finance reform, this is it.

Simply pledging to withhold my donations may not be enough. Perhaps I should threaten to perm my hair, put on blue eye shadow, and lip-synch this song outside their offices whenever they’re back in town. That should lead to a near-instantaneous change in behavior, doncha think?

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I loves me my tequila (and rum, o’ course), but I haven’t been drinking it at home – I’ve been on a wine kick for years now, and save my hard drinking for when I’m out at the bars with friends. It seems like too much damned effort to mix something for me alone. I just didn’t realize precisely how long it’s been since I bought a bottle for home use until just now:

After all the outreach to House Republicans, all the concessions, all of the reports about the economic crisis, all of the evidence showing the stimulative effects of the plan, not a single GOP lawmaker in the chamber voted for the economic rescue package.

The House voted, 244-188, on Wednesday evening for President Obama’s package of federal tax cuts and spending worth $819 billion and meant to jump-start the economy out of its worst crisis in decades.

Although the president’s legislative victory was no surprise, given the Democrats’ 255-to-178 advantage in the House, the lack of any Republican support was a disappointment for Mr. Obama. The vote came hours after Mr. Obama declared that “we don’t have a moment to spare” just after conferring with business leaders at the White House.

If the House Republican caucus, en masse, isn’t willing to support a stimulus package in the midst of a global economic crisis, it’s hard to imagine when, exactly, GOP lawmakers are going to work with the majority party in a constructive way.

So. Can we shut the fuck up about bipartisan bullshit, realize that these fuckwits think “bipartisan” means “what Cons want,” and use the Democratic majority to actually get shit done right, please? Thank you.

More importantly, Cantor is lying about the Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO) assessment of the recovery bill by continuing to cite a preliminary, incomplete, and misleading CBO chart — despite the fact that the full report was released Monday, giving him plenty of time to arm himself with the truth:

– Well, I mean, you know, the lasting problem with this bill, not only will it not deliver real stimulus — even the Congressional Budget Office says it’s not stimulative — is that, you know, people and businesses and entrepreneurs are going to look out into the future and see trillions of dollars of additional debt. [CNBC, 1/28/09]

– I think first of all you have to focus spending on actual stimulus. You’ve got CBO saying that only 25 percent goes out in the first year. You’ve got to have some type of ability to provide that jobs will be created or maintained because of the government spending. [Interview with Marc Ambinder, 1/27/09]

Cantor’s complaints ring hollow. As to his first claim, the CBO analysis found that the recovery bill would have “a noticeable impact on economic growth and employment in the next few years.” As far as his second statement, the CBO report stated that about 65 percent of the funding would be spent by September 2010. (The report said it “would not be appropriate” to calculate spending in 2009 because “because the bill would be enacted almost halfway into the fiscal year.”)

There’s probably some entertainment value in considering the “stupid vs. dishonest” dynamic — maybe Republicans know their arguments are wrong, and are repeating them anyway — but the end result is always the same. It’s hard to get through a single speech without searching frantically for the Maalox.

It reached the point today that Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.), a member of the leadership, said Democrats are acting like … wait for it … former Republican president Herbert Hoover. I suppose, by Ensign’s formulation, that makes Mitch McConnell FDR?

The media have been aiding their efforts. In a new analysis, ThinkProgress has found that the five cable news networks — CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, Fox Business and CNBC — have hosted more Republican lawmakers to discuss the plan than Democrats by a 2 to 1 ratio this week:

In total, from 6 AM on Monday to 4 PM on Wednesday, the networks have hosted Republican lawmakers 51 times and Democratic lawmakers only 24 times. Surprisingly, Fox News came the closest to offering balance, hosting 8 Republicans and 6 Democrats. CNN had only one Democrat compared to 7 Republicans.

What was that about the “liberal media” again?

The good thing about all this is that their hand’s been played. Obama tried to work with them; they refused. The country needed them to step up and do the right thing; they refused. Despite their objections, this package will pass. Despite their fuckery, we’ll see some benefit from it. And Obama’s just learned a very valuable lesson about working with Cons: you can’t.

Let me put it to you this way: giving praise to a deity who’s either this inept or this sadistic when it comes to creating all the beasts of the field etc. etc. seems really fucking dumb. And that’s setting aside the fact that there’s not one scintilla of evidence that even an inept, sadistic son of a bitch exists, much less an omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent one.

Reacting to President Obama’s executive order to close down Guantanamo in the coming year, Pennsylvania Congressman Jack Murtha said that the Gitmo detainees could be relocated to prisons in his home state. To find out what residents of Murtha’s district think of this proposal, Fox News headed to Pennsylvania.

They should’ve packed a map.

Our reader alerts to the actual boundaries of Murtha’s district, which don’t include Mel’s Restaurant in Somerset Borough—which Fox said was in the “heart” of Murtha’s district and popular with “constituents”—the pub where the reporter conducted his interviews.

Oops.

When a news channel is this egregiously, consistently stupid, can they still be called “news”?

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One common theme emerging from the current hullaballoo over the desperately-needed stimulus package is this: Cons don’t want one. Unless, of course, it consists entirely of tax cuts. They never shut up about tax cuts.

Now, my darlings, I know you’re not stupid. You know that just because someone repeats something ad nauseum does not mean it’s true. But you probably all have easily-snookered people in your lives, whom you care about. You may only care because no one has to pass a basic economics test in order to vote, and you wish they’d stop voting for outrageous idiots, but still, you care.

So when they fall under the sway of many Republicon voices all chorusing “Tax cuts, tax cuts, taaaaxx cuuuuttttsss!” you might wish to show them the road already traveled (h/t):

Larry Mishel on the effect, or more precisely the lack of any effect, of the 2003 tax cuts on “Jobs and Growth”:

EPI tracked the initiative’s effectiveness through a website, www.jobwatch.org, and found that it fell far short of its goals. Not only did the promised 1.4 million additional jobs not appear, but the 4.1 million jobs expected with no action also failed to materialize. In all, only 2.4 million jobs were created—1.7 million short of the administration’s projection without their new policy. Thus, by the Bush administration’s own metrics the tax cut program fell short by a total of 3.1 million jobs (149,000 pr month). For an analysis of how the Bush 2003 tax plan (The “Jobs and Growth” plan) fell short of its job claims see [here]…

On what basis can the conservatives who embraced those failed initiatives now claim that tax cuts are the best policy?

It seems Republicans have but one answer to every problem, get government out of the way through tax cuts and deregulation. When they are asked what caused it, whatever it might be, there is one answer, government. When asked how to fix it, whatever it might be, there is but one answer, reduce government through tax cuts and deregulation. For many, especially the politicians, it doesn’t matter whether tax cuts will actually fix the economy, the goal is to reduce the size of government by any means, and they see this as an opportunity to do just that.

[snip]

They already screwed this up once, the initial tax cut stimulus package put into place last spring was too small and poorly targeted, it had all sorts of problems all in the name of appeasing this same group – and here they are trying to muck up the process once again, to hold jobs hostage while they try to get tax cuts in place, even though something like 40% of the package is already devoted to tax cuts. Camel, tent, nose. I think it’s time to stand up and say no, sorry, you lost the election, and not by just a little bit. You had your chance and look where we ended up – with a terrible economy, huge holes in the budget making it much harder to respond to the downturn, a financial sector wrecked by your anti-government, self-regulation philosophy, what is it about the past several years that would lead us to have any confidence at all you have the slightest clue how to manage a well-running economy instead of driving it into a ditch, let alone heal one that is broken?

Down that road lies an economy in ruins, hundreds of thousands of jobs vanishing at an appalling pace, an ever-increasing gap between rich and poor, and a vanishing middle-class. Why the fuck do we want to walk it again?

If Cons had anything useful to contribute, and if they understood bi means two, I’d be quite pleased with Obama including them in the construction and passage of this bill. Considering that all they have to offer are the same horrible ideas that caused this disaster in the first place, I say fuck ’em. The people who broke the country don’t get to tell us how to fix it.

The next time the Cons want to throw their weight around and try to impose their will on the stimulus package, this is the only response Obama should give them:

Republicans now appear set to draw their line in the sand over the issue. One senior Senate GOP aide said Republicans were coalescing Monday evening around a plan to demand that Obama and Congressional Democrats reconfigure the stimulus to help mitigate foreclosures and spur buyers to invest in new homes.

“Republicans are increasingly concerned that the stimulus bill is leaving the housing crisis out of the equation,” the aide said.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is not supposed to focus on housing. Instead, its key areas are: energy, science and technology, health care, education, infrastructure, tax cuts, and helping workers hurt by the recession.

The Obama administration and Democratic leaders aren’t planning to ignore housing, however; they are attempting to address the foreclosure crisis through separate legislation. Last Wednesday, the House passed Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) legislation. As the Gavel pointed out, a key part of this legislation — in addition to stabilizing the financial markets — was helping Americans stay in their homes.

[snip]

Conservatives seem to be the ones actually “leaving the housing crisis out of the equation.” Only 18 Republicans voted for the TARP legislation; 156 voted against it. Last summer, conservatives also put up a vicious fight against Democratic-sponsored housing legislation. You can please all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but there’s not one single fucking thing you can do to please a bunch of batshit insane Cons. I hope Obama stops trying soon.

The traditional media must immediately validate their hissy fit by repeating said hissy fit talking points over and over again in print, on the Internets, on radio and on TV as many times as necessary to accomplish said goal of compromising the legislation that the hissy fit is applicable to.

Today, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) had a message for Republicans complaining about the stimulus bill: “Being bipartisan does not mean having to lay down and say we’ll do whatever you want.” His comments came after President Obama met earlier with congressional Republicans to discuss their concerns about the package, which is scheduled to be voted on in the House tomorrow. Hours before that meeting, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) urged Republicans to oppose the bill unless Democrats make significant concessions. Hoyer called it “very unfortunate” that Boehner “set the stage [by saying], ‘Yeah, you’re coming up here, but we’re voting against you.’” He added, “It takes two parties and two groups to be bipartisan. Bi means two.”

Good luck with that, Steny. Nothing I’ve seen convinces me these idiots can understand a concept as simple as bi meaning two, but maybe if you illustrate it with pictures from a Dick and Jane book, it’ll start to sink in.

President Obama was on the Hill today, meeting with House Republicans on the economic stimulus package. When asked if the president was winning any GOP votes, one conservative House Republican who was in the room told the Politico, “Nope,” adding that Obama “won’t compromise on more tax cuts.”

I’m not sure what definition of “compromise” the lawmaker was using, but the bottom line remains the same: the president’s efforts to garner Republican support aren’t working.

Obama seemed ready for the House Republicans to pounce, reportedly telling the gathered GOP lawmakers: “feel free to whack me over the head because I probably will not compromise on that part [tax cuts],” according to two sources i
n the room.

That’s basically what they did, hitting Obama for more than 30 minutes with questions about deficits, taxes and spending. Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Texas), won applause from his GOP colleagues when he asked the president whether he would promise that the stimulus would not be an excuse to raise taxes or increase spending.

Obama responded, according to sources in the room, that he was worried about the deficit and debt, and promised that his fiscal 2010 budget — coming out next month — would make hard choices in terms of spending cuts in an effort to reduce the deficit.

The Politico report noted that the “out of power minority party” seems to be “finding its voice as a stout opposition party instead of the party of compromise.” Perhaps, but I’m not entirely sure when, exactly, House Republicans were ever positioned as the “party of compromise.”

It’s time for Obama to stop making the bipartisan noises. These are people who hear no as maybe. Like date rapists, it’s best just to let them know in no uncertain terms that no means no – a sharp kick to the nads and a poke to the eyes might do it.

This afternoon, MSNBC’s David Shuster pressed Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) about the provision, pointing out that it would help relieve states of some health care costs. Apparently unable to respond, Hutchinson launched a reflexive and knee-jerk attack on the recovery plan, defaulting to the first opposition point she could think of:

SHUSTER: When you give them [states] money to help with Medicare, it means that the states that have to balance their own budgets won’t have to spend as much of their own money to try to pour into Medicare because people are hurting.

HUTCHISON: Well, one of the big problems I have with this bill is that you don’t know which states it’s going to, there’s no allocation, it’s just going to be in the agencies and the bureaucracies to make these decisions.

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I loves me some John Dean. For those of you who don’t know who the fuck I’m talking about, he’s the author of Conservatives Without Conscience, a FindLaw columnist, and former White House counsel to none other than Tricky Dick. There is no one on earth who can wield the Smack-o-Matic 3000 like a former Republican who had his ideals utterly shattered by the president he served.

His columns are always an education. Today, it was also a delight. John begins with a solid whack to Con bottoms that put a grin on my face from ear-to-ear:

Remarkably, the confirmation of President Obama’s Attorney General nominee, Eric Holder, is being held up by Texas Republican Senator John Cornyn, who apparently is unhappy that Holder might actually investigate and prosecute Bush Administration officials who engaged in torture. Aside from this repugnant new Republican embrace of torture (which might be a winning issue for the lunatic fringe of the party and a nice way to further marginalize the GOP), any effort to protect Bush officials from legal responsibility for war crimes, in the long run, will not work.

Isn’t that gorgeous? “A nice way to further marginalize the GOP.” I loves it.

But that’s not the blood and the bone of this column. No, he’s talking about the potential for prosecutions, and it’s looking good:

Bush’s Torturers Have Serious Jeopardy

Philippe Sands, a Queen’s Counsel at Matrix Chambers and Professor of International law at University College London, has assembled a powerful indictment of the key Bush Administration people involved in torture in his book Torture Team: Rumsfeld’s Memo and the Betrayal of American Values. He explains the legal exposure of people like former attorney general Alberto Gonzales, Dick Cheney’s counsel and later chief of staff David Addington, former Office of Legal Counsel attorney John Yoo, the former Department of Defense general counsel Jim Haynes, and others for their involvement in the torture of detainees at Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, and CIA secret prisons.

After reading Sands’s book and, more recently, listening to his comments on Terry Gross’s NPR show “Fresh Air,” on January 7, 2009 I realized how closely the rest of the world is following the actions of these former officials, and was reminded that these actions appear to constitute not merely violations of American law, but also, and very literally, crimes against humanity – for which the world is ready to hold them responsible.

Go, world! Woot!

The following is my email exchange with Professor Sands:

QUESTION: When talking to Ms. Gross you said you were not calling for such international investigations because we all need more facts. Given the fact that Judge Susan Crawford has now made clear that torture occurred, do you – and others with your expertise and background – have sufficient information to call for other countries to take action if the Obama Administration fails to act?

ANSWER: Last week’s intervention by Susan Crawford, confirming that torture occurred at Guantanamo, is highly significant (as I explain in a piece I wrote with Dahlia Lithwick: “The Turning Point: How the Susan Crawford interview changes everything we know about torture”). The evidence as to torture, with all that implies for domestic and foreign criminal investigation, is compelling. Domestic and foreign investigators already have ample evidence to commence investigation, if so requested or on their own account, even if the whole picture is not yet available. That has implications for the potential exposure of different individuals, depending on the nature and extent of their involvement in acts that have elements of a criminal conspiracy to subvert the law.

Heaven. I think I’m in… heaven.

QUESTION: Do you believe that a failure of the Obama Administration to investigate, and if necessary, prosecute, those involved in torture would make them legally complicit in the torture undertaken by the Bush Administration?

ANSWER: No, although it may give rise to violations by the United States of its obligations under the Torture Convention. In the past few days there have been a series of significant statements: that of Susan Crawford, of former Vice President Cheney’s confirming that he approved the use of waterboarding, and by the new Attorney General Eric Holder that he considers waterboarding to be torture. On the basis of these and other statements it is difficult to see how the obligations under Articles 7(1) and (2) of the Torture Convention do not cut in: these require the US to “submit the case to its competent authorities for the purpose of prosecution”.

This is sublime. If we don’t take these fuckers down, other countries could very easily do so. And I hope to fuck they have the political will. I count it a good sign Britain’s already got an investigation going.

Look, world. Don’t worry about the politics of this thing. Just apply some judicious pressure. Insist we try the war criminals. Poor Obama, he didn’t want to engage in “looking back,” but, y’know, there were those laws we have and the treaties we signed and all that pesky legal stuff, so we kinda sorta had to prosecute the fuckers who turned America into a nation of torturers. Darn the luck.

Really, it’ll be just devastating if you force us to hold our leaders accountable, but we’ll cope somehow.

And hey, aren’t you really doing Bush et al a big ol’ favor? Cuz they’re under a cloud and stuff, and like John says:

One would think that people like Cheney, Rumsfeld, Addington, Gonzales, Yoo, Haynes and others, who claim to have done nothing wrong, would call for investigations to clear themselves if they really believed that to be the case. Only they, however, seem to believe in their innocence – the entire gutless and cowardly group of them, who have shamed themselves and the nation by committing crimes against humanity in the name of the United States.

In an important development, Switzerland now says it may be willing to take some of the detainees from Guantanamo Bay once they are released.

Switzerland is ready to consider taking in detainees from the U.S. prison for terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba if that helps to shut it down, the Swiss government said on Wednesday.

“For Switzerland, the detention of people in Guantanamo is in conflict with international law. Switzerland is ready to consider how it can contribute to the solution of the Guantanamo problem,” the government said in a statement.

Contrast the Swiss maturity with America’s Cons throwing hysterical fits over the idea of transferring detainees into supermax prisons on American soil. It’s a wonder the world has any respect left for us at all.